The connectors and buckles are commonly used to join the ends of belts, straps, bands and other such linear elements together. The buckles come in a variety of designs and have diverse characteristics such as being adjustable, quick-closing, and quick-opening. From among quick-opening or quick-release buckles, hook and loop fasteners are quite popular because they contain no metal, are generally immune to harsh treatment, and are resistant to most elements such as wind, rain, snow and the like. The buckles comprising two interlocking parts are well known (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,945,614; 5,311,649; 5,791,026; 5,832,573). The patents describe buckles having insert (male) and receptacle (female) parts.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,615,460 discloses a male/female-type buckle for belts and lanyards, wherein the insert member can be releasably inserted into the receptacle member and is locked in place be means of two resilient opposed lateral arms extending away from the center of the insert. The arms compress upon insertion, thereby providing a spring loading potential energy for their outward expansion. The arms move into locking slots on the body of the receptacle upon full insertion of the insert and spring out into the locked position within the slot.
The female part of such type of a buckle can be adopted to attach an accessory's string (eg. cell phone, USB flash, digital camera, ID cards etc.).
As a disadvantage, this type of buckle does not allow for adopting the length of the accessory's string, which results in undesirable swinging effect of the hung accessory.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,938,137 discloses a leash attached to the cell phone case and including a spring retractable leash cord in a housing pivotally attached to the belt that will prevent dropping and damage to a cell phone in a case clipped to the belt. The leash housing is pivotally attached to a locking belt hook that cannot easily be accidentally removed.
Though this type of clipping the cell phone partly eliminates the swinging effect of the hung cell phone, it makes a free manipulation with the cell phone more difficult. Further, the leash housing is exposed to a mechanical strain and thus also to detrition. This detrition dramatically increases when using inadequate pulling force, the real limit of which can very hardly be determined and is different for each user, but it causes an irreversible damage of the leash housing.
Further, it is known that the cords that are used for attaching the accessory to the buckle often have a metal ending, or also a small metal ring, by means of which they are attached to female members of buckles, thus increasing the material demands for their manufacturing.